It is starting to get light out when Rudy moves close to me in bed and reaches for my hand. I lie quiet, hoping Rudy will drift back to sleep.
“I love you, Missy,” he says.
I sigh, wanting to believe him, not knowing what to say.
“I get scared you’ll leave me again,” he says.
In the dark I feel the knotty bruise on my upper arm.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I say. “I want us to get along—all happy days.”
“We will. I promise,” he says, pushing my nightgown up.
“Maybe, if we went to one of those support groups . . .”
“We don’t need that support group stuff,” he says, rolling over on top of me. “I know what we need.”
I feel him pushing at me. I open my legs for him, but it’s as if I’m somewhere else, floating over the bed instead of in it. When I first came back from the shelter, sex felt like love. I was wild for Rudy, wanting him all the time. Now the love part seems missing. I just want him to hurry up and get it over with.
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When Rudy drops me and Cheyenne off at the Infant Center he gives me a quick kiss, then leans down to kiss Cheyenne.
“Mama-Daddy-Owie,” she says, frowning and backing away.
He looks at her, frustrated, then tells her, “Whatever.”
He turns back to me. “I’ve got to go see that guy at my mom’s work—get her off my back—but I want you to come straight home after Hamilton.”
“But Rudy . . .”
“No! You go over to that lowlife Sojourner school and you’ll be sorry! I guarantee it.”
He looks me in the eye for what seems like a long time, then peels out down the street. Bergie jumps at the squeal of tires. When she sees it’s Rudy acting up, she looks toward me and shakes her head. I turn away. What can I say?
“I forgot a couple of books that I planned to take to Sojourner yesterday. Do you need a ride today?” Bergie asks.
“Sure,” I say. “I haven’t got a bus schedule yet.”
“And Rudy’s not picking you up?”
“He’s got a job interview today.”
“Well, that’s something,” Bergie says.
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For a while it seems as if things are going to be okay. Rudy started out part-time at Kinko’s, but two people quit the same week he was hired, so he got moved to a full-time schedule right away. Sometimes he even gets overtime. Rudy’s happier when he’s busy and has money coming in, and when Rudy’s happy, I’m happy, too.
Mostly he works a swing shift, starting at three in the afternoon and getting off anywhere between eleven at night and one in the morning. So we don’t see much of each other these days. Cheyenne and I are usually asleep when Rudy gets home from work. At least Cheyenne’s asleep. I’m either asleep or pretending. And then Rudy’s still asleep when I leave for school. Or maybe he’s pretending, too.
I think that night Rudy yelled at me and hurt my arm really affected Cheyenne. If Rudy’s sitting in a chair, or stretched out on the floor, she walks way around him, out of his reach. I’d kind of like to talk to Bergie about it, see what she thinks it means, but then I know one question will lead to another, and I’m not sure I want that. Maybe I’m as bad as Irma, not wanting to look at the total picture.
The main contact I have with Rudy these days is the telephone. Always he calls right after I get home from school. It’s not like he has much to say—more like he’s checking up on me. Then later, there’s a silent phone call. I’m pretty sure it’s Rudy. Every night sometime between nine and ten, the phone rings. By that time, Irma’s in her bedroom with the door closed, so I always answer the phone. I say hello a couple of times, and when I get no answer I hang up. Every night that Rudy’s working this happens. It never happens on his days off, when he’s home.
Anyway, Rudy hasn’t said a word about me staying away from Sojourner since he started working. I guess he’s been too busy. I’m glad. I don’t want to fight with him about it, but I’m for sure going to finish the math class and graduate on time, on stage.
At first, computer math seemed way too hard, like I’d never understand it, but now it’s all beginning to make sense. What I really like about it is how the computer gives the same response each time I do a particular thing. Like if I go to the “catalog” file, and open “data entry,” the same thing will come up on my screen, every time. The computer is not moody. I like that.
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When Cheyenne and I get home from school Thursday afternoon, I see that the answer machine is blinking. There’s a message for Irma from her sister, and a message from my mom. I can hardly believe my ears. I tried to call her after I left the shelter, just to let her know where I was, but I couldn’t reach her. So then, I called Sean’s mom, who said she’d get the message to Mom. But I never heard back.
On the recording, Mom leaves a new number and says she’s going to be in Los Angeles for a while, and she’d like to see me and Cheyenne. I call back.
“June Fisher here. Leave a message.”
That’s my mom all right—no wasted words.
“This is Melissa. I’ll call back later,” I say, and hang up, disappointed.
It’s been nearly a year since I’ve seen my mom. Not that we’re mad or anything, we just never seem to get around to it. I guess that shouldn’t bother me, but it does sometimes. Leticia’s always got some story about her mom bringing home something new for her to wear, or giving her some wise advice. I think I’d like that.
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Now that Rudy’s not usually home for dinner, Irma and I don’t sit down together. That’s fine. It’s easier because I don’t have to fix a regular dinner, and there’s not so much clean-up to do. Honestly though, sometimes I miss the shelter. There was always someone to talk to there, and in group meetings we talked about things that really mattered to us, and there was always something going on. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ll always feel lonely wherever I go.
I bring Cheyenne’s ABC train puzzle into the living room and help her with it and try to read at the same time. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the title of the book. It’s a true story, about the early life of a famous black woman. It’s hard to understand how people can be so awful to each other—like white people not letting black people drink from the same fountains, or go to the same schools—or, on the other hand, those black guys that beat a white truck driver almost to death, just because he was white. I hope all that race hate stuff is over by the time Cheyenne gets to school. Well, it won’t be, I know. But I hope it is, anyway.
“Look Chey-Chey, you’ve got ABCDEF, now what comes next?”
She picks up a Y and tries to make it fit.
“No, try singing the song. Remember?”
Cheyenne sings the ABC song while I point to the letters that are already in place.
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . . ”
“Yea! G’s next,” I cheer her on. “Can you find a G?”
She looks at the big plastic letters strewn all around her. I pick up a J, an L, and a G and place them in front of her.
“It’s one of these. Which one is the G?”
“Right there!” she says, poking the G with her index finger. “See ’em?”
“Yea! You’re so smart!”
We both laugh and she works to make the G fit. I read a paragraph, and then see that she’s trying to put a Y next to the G. “No, look, Cheyenne. What comes next?”
I start singing the song and she joins in. And we go through the routine all over again. It’s not the easiest way to read a book, one paragraph between puzzle letters, but I don’t want to be like some of those moms who dump their babies in front of any old TV program just to get them out of their hair. “Sesame Street,” or “Mr. Rogers,” or “Barney,” that’s okay. I know Cheyenne learned the alphabet song on “Sesame Street,” and she knows how to count to ten, too. That’s from “Sesame Street.” But I don’t plop her in front of junk TV.
It is after nine when Cheyenne is settled down, bathed and asleep. I pick up my book again. I’m only on page thirty-six, 210 pages to go and there’s a test on it Friday. I can’t tell yet, but I think I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings may end up being one of my book friends. I think it has more to say to me than Go Ask Alice did.
Reading about how a “spirit-filled” woman knocked the preacher’s false teeth out in the middle of a sermon has me laughing out loud. I’m thinking how Maya Angelou sure knows how to tell a funny story, when the phone rings. It’s probably another one of those mystery calls, but I answer anyway.
“Hello?”
“Melissa?”
“Mom?”
“What have you been doing?”
“Do you want a whole year’s worth, or just today?” I say. I don’t mean for it to come out sarcastic, but it does.
“In general,” she says.
“Well, taking care of Cheyenne, going to school, keeping up with the laundry and housework, mainly that. What about you?”
“I’m settling down.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I’m tired of the circuit. I got on at Convention Center Services in L.A. You know, where Teresa works now. I want to stay in one place for a while.”
“You’re not working the track anymore?”
“Nope.”
I can hardly believe it. That’s all I’ve ever known my mom to do, go from racetrack to racetrack.
“I’d like for you and the baby to come over to my place. Teresa and I got a place together. It’s not much, but we’re close to a park, so it would be fun for the baby . . .You know, that business of moving every meet, four or five times a year—it gets a little old after twenty years or so.”
“It was old to me by the time I got to first grade,” I tell her.
“Yeah, well. Water under the bridge,” she says. “So, do you want to come on Saturday?”
“Sure,” I say.
She gives me her address and I tell her we’ll try to get there around noon. Really, I want to talk to Teresa as much as I want to see Mom. I always wonder about Sean, and I’m sorry we’ve lost track of one another. It’s so easy to lose track. I have no idea where I could reach Daphne anymore. She’s just gone.
I’ll have to call MTA and see what the best way is to get to my mom’s new place. Maybe Cheyenne and I can make an adventure of it—riding the big bus, or maybe even the Metrolink. I’ve never been on that before, and Cheyenne loves seeing the little trains zip along the railway near the freeway.
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“Hey! Who were you talking to tonight!”
At first I think I’m dreaming. Then I feel a strong poke at my back.
“I asked you a question!”
I turn to see Rudy standing over me, looking down with the look I don’t like to see on his face. I rub my eyes and glance at the iridescent numbers on the clock. Two-thirty-seven. I get a whiff of stale beer fumes.
“Who were you talking to on the phone tonight, damnit!”
“Shhh, Rudy, you’ll wake Cheyenne up,” I plead.
“Answer me!” he yells.
“I was talking to my mother,” I tell him.
He lets out a snort. “You expect me to believe that?”
Cheyenne stirs. I get out of bed and walk to the living room, Rudy following close behind. If a fight’s coming, Cheyenne doesn’t need to see it. In the living room I turn to face Rudy.
“It’s the truth. My mom called. Listen, her message is still on the machine.”
I press the play button but before he can hear even the first word he punches erase.
“That don’t mean nothin’! You probably had someone from that loser school call and leave a message. Anyone could pretend to be your mom. You think I’m stupid?”
He shoves me and I trip backward, landing on the couch.
“Huh? You think I’m stupid?”
“Yes!” I scream, standing to face him. “Yes! You’re stupid! I was talking to my mom! That’s all!”
“SHUT UP!” he yells over me, but I keep yelling back. I am so angry, I don’t care what he does to me.
“Why would I lie to you, Rudy? I’ve been right here, taking care of our baby, and cleaning your mom’s house, and fixing your lunch for tomorrow and doing my homework! And if you think I’ve been doing anything else, then you’re STUPID!”
He smacks me in the face and I smack him right back. Irma rushes from her bedroom and pushes between us. Rudy shoves her aside.
“Stop, Rudy. I won’t have this in my house anymore!”
Rudy shoves her down on the couch and starts pacing, back and forth across the room, again and again, like a caged tiger. He keeps looking at me, even when he turns and changes direction.
“I know what you’ve been doing, bitch!” he says in that quiet, measured voice that is more frightening than yelling and screaming can ever be.
Irma gets up from the couch and puts her hand on Rudy’s shoulder. He pushes her away, not even pausing in his tracks.
I stand, watching, following his pacing, not blinking away from his hate-filled eyes.
“That Mr. Raley from lowlife high school was in getting stuff copied today. Your name was on the paper—some kind of sheet spread or something.”
“Spreadsheet,” I tell him, my voice as hateful as his. “He wants to use my spreadsheet as an example.”
“Yeah . . . I asked him, ‘Who’s this?’ all innocent, and he says one of my star students!”
“So?”
He stops and faces me, inches away. “So, I told you to stay away from that place! That’s SO!”
His fists are clenched and his face is so stony it looks like it would chip away if you took a sculptor’s hammer and chisel to it. I picture my hands, holding the tools, chip, chip, chipping away at Rudy’s stone face. Chipping away lines of hatred, chipping away his nose, and his chin, and the vision gets me laughing, and I can’t stop laughing and laughing in his stone face.
He stands silent, stunned, and I keep laughing. I don’t mean to. I can’t help it.
“Stop!” he yells, shoving me backward onto the couch.
The laughter keeps coming until I am weak with it.
“STOP!” he demands. He kicks me in the shin, hard. Pain shoots through me. Sharp. I catch my breath and then laugh harder, sharp and fast, like the pain.
“You slut! Boning that Raley guy to be his star whore!” Rudy yells, reaching back for the magazine rack, swinging it overhead and down at me. I jump aside, just in time. It breaks the wooden trim on the side of the couch clean in half, like a well-placed karate chop. Rudy looks at the bent frame of the rack, confused, as if it had bent itself and somehow managed to jump into his hand.
I laugh so hard I wet my pants, and that’s funnier still. I can’t help it. I look up at Rudy. Stony face, chip, chip, chip, I think, and laugh harder still. He stands, puzzled now. He doesn’t know his face is chipped away. He looks down at me.
“Stop,” he pleads, “please.”
Irma comes to the couch with a cold cloth and wipes my face with it.
“Stop it, Melissa,” she says, almost gently.
Rudy sits down on the footstool across from me, his head in his hands. I turn my back to them and stifle my laughter in the cushion of the couch. I don’t know when my laughter turns to weeping, or when they leave the room, or when someone covers me with a light blanket.
Sometime before dawn I limp into the bathroom and check my skinned, bruised shin. I wash it gently and spray it with Bactine. The colors, red, pink, brown, purple, remind me of one of Daphne’s pictures, except her array of colors was all over her body, not just her shin. Just the shin isn’t so bad.
I limp lightly into the bedroom and change nightgowns. Cheyenne is sound asleep, gripping Mary. I stand looking at her for a moment, filled with love. I don’t look in Rudy’s direction.
Next I clean the couch cushion with warm sudsy water. Running my hand over the break in the couch’s wood trim, I know the force of that blow could have killed me.
For a moment I picture it, the wrought iron rack coming down full force against my head, the split skull, the instant darkness. Then the thought of not being around to love and protect Cheyenne hits me hard in the pit of my stomach. What would become of her without me? I sit on the couch, thankful to be alive, and to know that I’m the first one Cheyenne will see in the morning, and the last at night. Then, I toss my still damp nightgown into the washer and start a load of clothes, put a towel over the damp spot on the couch, and lie there until the day’s first light shows at the edge of the living room drapes. My shin throbs.